


Experiments on Attraction

by Dulcidyne



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alcohol and mistakes, Alternate Universe - College/University, Banter, Board Games, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Kissing, Modern Thedas, Nihilist cinnamon rolls, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-04-20 15:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4792886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dulcidyne/pseuds/Dulcidyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two grad students volunteer for a psychology experiment designed to make strangers fall in love. Only, it turns out they aren't quite strangers.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness

**Author's Note:**

> -Inspired by A. Aron’s (AY-AY-ron!) 1997 study, ‘The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness’. Questions are quoted directly from the study questionnaire, link to the study provided in endnotes for anyone interested :D

Evelyn shifted and hideous orange vinyl creaked beneath her. No, not just orange. This was a color that had been discontinued in the last age but still lived on in buildings like this one: concrete monstrosities designed with an ‘avant garde prison’ aesthetic in mind. Of course, being the ugliest building on campus--too old to be modern, too new to be classic--they gave it to the science types. She suspected the university powers-that-be were actually hoping for some sort of chemical explosion to do what time would take too long to accomplish.

“If it isn’t my favorite outlier.”

She stood and the vinyl tried to follow her, suctioning to the backs of her knees and then giving way with a slap. That made for the sixth time she'd forgotten the plunger-like qualities of the furniture.

Dorian smirked  as she rubbed the irritated skin.

“Remind me how I let you keep talking me into this again?” she asked.

He offered her his most winning smile. It was the sort of smile that said ‘I can do whatever I want because I have a charming accent and cheekbones sculpted by the Maker’.

“Because we pay you,” he said, starting down the hallway with the assumption that she would follow. She did, but only to insist, “No you don’t. You just paid me the once.”

He paused in front of a door, his hand on the metal handle. “Oh, right.”

She had been thinking while waiting for him to come out to the lobby. “Isn’t this poor study design? To use the same person over and over? And the whole fact that I know what you’re studying, shouldn’t I still be blinded to avoid bias? I’m also pretty sure you’re not supposed to tell a subject her results. Or call her ‘completely incapable of real human connection’, for that matter. I mean that definitely violates some IACUC protocol ”

“That’s for non-human test subjects you know.”

“Still,” Evelyn insisted, annoyed that her internet research had failed to inform her of that.

Dorian shot her an inscrutable look, which meant that she was right. “Well, yes the rest is true but I’m not using any of your data after the first trial.”

Her mouth popped open. All those tests. All those questions and strangers and awkward silences followed by even more awkward eye contact. All of that and he wasn’t even using any of it?

“What? Why not!”

“Well you just said why not,” he answered, voice flat and simultaneously amused. “For Andraste’s sake Evie, I told you your results afterwards! I couldn’t use any of it even if I wanted too.”

He didn’t even need to tell her, it had been pretty obviously how spectacularly she had failed. Well, failed was the wrong word probably, but it had felt like failure. Especially when she knew the majority of the other participants saw successful results. If it had just been once, she could have chalked it up to simple incompatibility. But it was hard to write off five. It was hard not to turn that inside and wonder if something was fundamentally broken.

She wanted to kill Dorian. No. She was _going to_ kill Dorian.

“I’m leaving,” she hissed.

“Wait, Evie, just-” he grabbed her by the hand and pressed his thumbs into her twitching palm gently. Against her better judgement, she paused to hear what could possibly justify hours of social torture. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again with a snap as grey-green eyes flashed away from her angry glare.

“Please,” he said finally, “just...give it one last shot. You’ll like this one, I know you will.”

Suprise shoved her anger aside and she snatched her hand from him to slap him on the shoulder. “You’ve been setting me up! You’ve been using _science_ to set me up!”

She slapped him again and Dorian winced, ducking the blow unsuccessfully. “Alright. Yes, yes I have. Happy?”  
  
Part of her, a very small part, was touched that he cared enough about her dry spell. Much larger, however, was the angry part.

“I am not.”

“You both have a lot in common already. His results were all negative too,” Dorian said, as if that would convince her to walk into that room. “It’s scientific curiosity at this point. If this works with you two, it could work with anyone!”

She could see the mad scientist gleam lighting his face up from within. It was oddly comforting to realize that his obsession with his experiment was more significant than the meddling wish to get her laid. Dorian could talk for hours about the minutiae of his work, he had a reverence for his data that would have been more in place in a documentary on cult followings. That kind of drive was something she understood well. Fanaticism was practically something they handed out with the acceptance letters to the University of Kirkwall’s grad programs.

Sensing her weakening resolve, he brandished the device from his pocket--a portable and relatively unobtrusive prototype he'd designed that meant she wouldn’t be trying to fall in love with someone with wires sticking out everywhere, like some kind of malfunctioning android. It was essentially a fancy ECG with a whole suite of other functions--wireless data transmission being one--that would tell Dorian and anyone else looking at the readout how she was feeling based on unconscious physical triggers. It was embarrassing, but not nearly as bad as the part where she had an intimate conversation with a stranger.

She shot him one last glare as he rubbed the conductive gel over her forearm and taped the device into place.

“He isn't bad to look at either,” was all Dorian said before handing her the list of questions and opening the door to shove her inside the room.

Dorian was not lying, she saw that immediately. If anything, the guy was too good looking, as if someone had spliced a men’s underwear ad into the room. The effect was all the more surreal in the middle of fluorescent lighting, dingy linoleum, and the rough brown upholstery of the two chairs seated opposite each other of the small table. Somehow, the lights didn’t wash out his skin or turn his blonde hair sickly green. Lucky bastard. She could probably pass for a blight victim with all the favors the lighting did for her. 

The underwear model stood as she entered and she found herself scrutinizing the line of his broad shoulders beneath the fabric of his shirt. Dorian would definitely be getting some interesting readings right now. For once, the room felt too warm and she knew the ancient AC was not to blame. She laughed; a single, short ‘hah’.

“Sorry, it’s just--you’ve done this before right?” she attempted to explain while simultaneously not explaining anything.

But from the wry twist of his smile, she saw that he’d caught her meaning. “Yes, uh...yes.”

Evelyn couldn’t help but stare a bit longer. There was something vaguely familiar about him but for the life of her, she couldn't place it. That happened to her a lot. She was bad with faces and the campus was full of old study partners and classmates. She couldn't ask without risking embarrassment. All she could do was stare and think up a whole host of important questions; like if the glimpse of red in his stubble was more noticeable in natural sunlight and what that roughened jaw would feel like against her thumb. The desire to find out was as sudden as it was shocking. Would it be weird if she asked?

Maker, _yes_ , it would be really weird. This is why she was back here for the sixth time instead of out on a date. This poor man had no idea exactly what kind of depraved, stubble-obsessed individual he was locked in a room with--okay, not locked, that would be a bit extreme even for Dorian’s mad scientist tendencies.

She realized he was staring back just as intensely and her stomach did a funny thing--as if she were on the Amaranthine pier and watching the lights and stars rush by in a dizzy rollercoaster plummet to the ground.

Shaking her head to clear the heady swirl of air, she strode forward and extended an unsteady hand. “Evelyn. Nice to meet you fellow test subject.”

It was a weak attempt at defusing the feeling of anticipation still coiling low in her stomach. Relief and a twinge of disappointment hit her when the intensity filtered out of his eyes--nice eyes, she had a thing for brown eyes and his were remarkable--to be replaced by polite interest. His hand dwarfed hers, calloused palm dry and hot against her own. It was so distracting, she barely heard him introduce himself.

“Cullen. Likewise.”

The name didn't ring any bells. Shame.

She took a seat in the opposite chair, tugging the hemline her shorts lower in a vain attempt to spare her legs. The fabric was quality stuff, some sort of recycled velcro. Evelyn placed the folded paper full of questions on the table, flattening the creases down and staring at it for far too long while anxiety fluttered to life in her chest.

Well, if Dorian wasn’t using this data, Cullen had a right to know. It didn’t feel above board to take part in this elaborate set up without his knowledge.

“I think you should know...” she hesitated, glancing up at him while she folded up corners of the paper with a shaky hand. “Dorian doesn’t need this data. I don’t know what he told you, but…”  
  
“He told me,” Cullen said, his high cheekbones staining pink. She’d never seen a man blush so easily before, it made her think that blushing was highly underrated in the male population.

“Oh,” she said, “oh, well then. I guess we’ll start with the first question?”

She picked up the paper but then dropped it immediately and said, “You know he probably won’t pay you right?”

“Yeah, I...I know that,” he reached up and rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “I don’t mind. That is, I don’t mind doing the experiment if you don’t.”

He met her eyes, tentative at first but then searching. It was disconcerting. He had an intelligent look about him, as if he were puzzling over something somewhere in the back of his mind at all times. Her maybe? Definitely not, she was no puzzle, he could probably see every embarrassing emotion written across her face. She was an easy read; terrible at Wicked Grace, with her handful of rapid-fire expressions spelling out exactly what she was thinking. And right then, she was thinking that perhaps this whole experiment would finally work for her after all.

“I don’t,” she said, voice gone breathy as her pulse skittered around like a panicked animal. Coughing once to get rid of whatever that was, she picked up the paper again and asked him one of the questions from the first set, “Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?”

He chuckled, leaning back in the velcro chair to look up at the ceiling for a moment. “I can’t remember the last time I actually sat down to have dinner. Or the last real meal I had that wasn’t delivered to my apartment.”

“The life of a student,” she said, “I lived on ramen alone my first year here and I’m pretty sure I developed scurvy by the end of the semester.”

He rested his elbows on the table. “Like a Rivaini pirate?”

“Exactly like a Ravaini pirate except without the benefit of thieving and debauching.”

An eyebrow quirked up. “Your definition of a benefit is...interesting.”

“We’re getting off topic.” She pursed her lips together and snapped the paper up to avoid smiling back at him. “I thought you said you had done this before.”

He smirked, not fooled. “I have, I was avoiding the question. I’ve never had a good answer for it. The whole point is that this person is supposed to be meaningful and I just don’t picture inviting Brother Genetivi or someone important over for lukewarm eggrolls.”

“Well yeah, he’s dead,” Evelyn pointed out, “Zombie Genetivi would obviously be more interested in the contents of your skull, not eggrolls.”

She dropped the the paper, pinning it down with her palm. One of his hands reached forward and for a heart-stopping second she thought he meant to press it down on top of hers. Instead, he slipped the paper from beneath her palm and scanned the questions for one to ask her.  
  
“Wait a minute,” Evelyn protested. “You still didn’t answer the question.”

“Yes I did. Zombie Genetivi.”

She thought that was cheating and from the self-satisfaction turning up the corner of his lips, it was obvious he thought so too. Petulant, she snatched the paper back. “Nope, doesn’t count. I get to ask another one.”

Before he could protest, she asked, “When did you last sing to yourself? Or to someone else?”

The blush was back, with renewed force and she expected him to dodge it like he had with the dinner one. “To myself? This morning. To someone else...does singing in church count?”

Evelyn straightened in her chair, a soap bubble of delight expanding in her chest at the thought of this man singing to himself. Only a tiny, naughty part of her insisted on picturing this happening in the shower and she quickly put a stop to that before it got her into trouble. “What did you sing?”

“You know, I don’t really remember,” he said, far too casually.

Her laughter bubbled up, effervescent and sweet on her lips. “ _That_ embarrassing?”

Cullen stammered, “No--it’s a good song. It’s just--”

“Not shower singing material?” she finished before she could realize that the shower image had been banished quite as effectively as she thought. Her voice had dropped lower, soft and velvet--seductive almost.

Instead of answering, his hand brushed against hers, sending up a shock through her nerves that she dropped the paper into his waiting fingers. Some dark current rippled through his eyes and his thumb lingered against the side of her wrist, callouses whispering over her pulse. Evelyn shivered, goosebumps rising over her arms.

“It’s my turn to ask something I think,” he murmured, eyes fastened to her mouth where she was biting down on the edge of her lower lip, something she did whenever she was lost in thought. Except there was no thought to lose herself in. Just warm eyes and the low, melodic timbre of his voice. She could imagine that voice humming snatches of embarrassing songs in the shower, all wet skin and woodsy soap smell, fingers trailing over--

“Name three things you think we have in common.”

 _Snap out of it Evelyn._ She bit down on her lip again to really think about it. “We’re both grad students.”

He looked surprised but it rapidly filtered away. “I guess I do look too old for an undergrad.”

Well yes, he looked a bit older than most grad students as well but mostly she knew because he didn’t have the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed look about him. He had the look of someone who slept too little, worked too much, had too much debt and too few job prospects.

“It’s the subtle air of cynicism about you,” she answered. “But for the other two things....I suppose neither of us know how to cook.”  
  
“We established that bit before I think,” he conceded. “I would like to learn, if I had the time.”

She nodded and twisted her hands together in an attempt to work the tremors out of her fingers, feeling suddenly anxious. “We both...can I come back to the last one? Maybe I can think of it after a few more questions.”

“Of course,” he said and all the anxiety evaporated in her stomach, making her feel fizzy and slightly tipsy as if she were filled to the brim with champagne instead of relief.

The rest of the questions from the first set were easier. He had three siblings. He was Andrastian and attended services regularly. He couldn’t do casual relationships. His master’s thesis project was a new chess AI and most of his free time was spent trying to outsmart his own code in the game. He was smart, had a dry sense of humor, and she was half convinced the man was a figment of her imagination. During the process of passing the paper back and forth--why hadn’t Dorian given him his own...oh wait, she knew why--they had leaned further and further in towards each other, their hands touched more and more. She wouldn’t stop smiling for weeks, she was certain of it.

Brushing her palm over his knuckles to retrieve the paper, she savored the solid warmth radiating from him before asking a question from the second set. The questions were designed to get more and more personal with each set and she was looking forward to it--for once.

“Is there something you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time?”

He searched her face, expression soft and eyes wondrously warm as his voice came out rough and low. “Yes.”

It was more exhale than anything and she found herself sucking in a breath. “That’s not really…you didn’t answer.”

Cullen smiled with a cockiness she found endearing considering how easily he flustered. “I did actually.”

It was difficult to think when he smiled like that, the table was small between them and he felt so close. She let it slide and asked the second part. “Why haven’t you done it?”

Their fingertips were almost touching and he shifted his hand further to bring the points together. “I was too nervous. I’m not exactly...good at putting myself out there. I thought that this would be easier.”

Her eyes darted up from their hands. “Wait, what is it in the first place?”

What did he mean? What did that mean? There was a fluttering sensation against her ribs, a rapid, heady shiver pulsing through her chest.

Cullen didn’t bother with the paper, his eyes remained locked on hers. “Next one is mine, right?”

She nodded, still turning over his answer in her head.

“If someone couldn't work up the nerve to talk to you outside of an experiment, would you hold that against him?”

Evelyn frowned, a dazed and stupid part of her brain insisting _‘That isn’t one of the questions!’_

He read her frown with a wince and drew his hands away, shifting back to his side of the table. A hand came up to rub at the back of his neck and he stared down at the formica. “I’m sorry. This was...I didn't think you even remembered me. And then I kept seeing you in the lab when Dorian was testing my newest build and I wanted to get to know you so I offered to be a subject for his experiment in the hopes that…” he trailed off.

“You put yourself through this torture just to talk to me?” she burst out, not sure if she was flattered or--no, she was flattered. Definitely flattered.

Wait, Dorian had said ‘all’ his results were negative.

“How many times?” she asked, sure it couldn’t have been many. She’d seen some of Dorian’s other ‘test subjects’ and they were generally a good looking, albeit financially compromised group. How was it remotely possible that he’d ‘failed’ more than once? He was warm and funny and sincere and smart. He didn’t even need the underwear model looks, what the hell was going on that he was back in this room?

Cullen coughed, clearing his throat. “I...uh. Six?”

“Six!” Evelyn clapped her hand down on the table in disbelief. “Wait--including this or not?”

He laughed, sharp and sudden as if it took him by surprise. “Not. I finally came clean to Dorian after the last time. He was starting to wonder why I kept volunteering, considering how--”

“Let me guess, he said you were ‘completely incapable of real human connection’?”

“No, he just assumed I was really picky.”

Evelyn grumbled at that. Why didn’t she get to just be picky?

Cullen shifted, clearly unsure of what to do and she wanted to grab herself and just shake until her teeth chattered. _Get it together, Evelyn._ She’d left the man hanging and he clearly didn’t want to press what he’d interpreted as a not-so-tactful ‘change the topic’ rejection tactic.

She reached forward in the guise of grabbing the paper but brushed her fingertips against the hand he rested at the edge instead. His eyes snapped up, meeting hers and she offered a soft smile. “I didn’t answer your question.”

His answering smile was hesitance lit around the edges with a glimmer of confidence. “You didn’t.”

“The third thing we have in common is that we both want to get the hell out of here and get a real dinner together.”


	2. First Data Set: Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to write either a prologue/epilogue for this fic and I couldn't decide so I ended up doing both. Thank you so much for reading! I can't say how much I appreciated the comments/replies to this fic and they're actually the reason I decided to come back and extend out the story in this setting even more. Thank you again!

“Sounds ridiculous,” Cullen said over the rim of his mug, “I can’t imagine it would work.”

He sipped at his coffee, not sure if it had cooled enough to drink without risking second-degree burns to his esophagus. It had not. Wincing in pain, he set the mug back down on the cafe table.

Dorian adjusted his exorbitantly expensive Aclassi reading glasses and shot Cullen an amused look. “Even if that is true--which it isn’t, I’ll have you know why in just a moment--what an impolitic thing to say. Not all of us can afford to be picky about our funding options.”

That was true enough and something sank in his stomach at the practiced feel of Dorian’s defense. How many times today had he repeated that to the backbiting vipers disguised as grad students in his program? Dorian was hardly the most popular with his peers (the fact that he was the type of man who could pull off a pocket square was an affront to their jeans-and-tshirt brand of apathy) and this would alienate him forever. There was no greater affront to competitors than success. And landing this grant for his experiment was a success, ridiculous premise and all.

Cullen grimaced at his own elitism but Dorian had already moved on, citing the original published paper and subsequent work on ‘generating interpersonal report’. It was a testament to their friendship that Cullen was able to resist the urge to scoff.

“It’ll be a chance--a real chance--to overcome the difficulties in developing interpersonal relationships in this population.” Leaning back so that the chair balanced on two of the four legs, Dorian raised one groomed eyebrow. “But that’s not why you don’t think it will work. In fact, I’ll wager you haven’t the faintest idea why you are so skeptical.”

“Simple pragmatism.”

Dorian was triumphant, the sound of the chair legs clattering down on the floor punctuating his laugh. “Hah! I knew it! No. It isn’t pragmatism. A real pragmatic, like myself for example...”

Perfect teeth flashed at Cullen--Dorian’s own brand of arrogance blended up with just enough self-awareness to make it charming. “A real pragmatic would understand that there is no magical connection that makes two people fall for one another. No special someone. There is only special circumstance and special biology and nothing more. Both of which could feasibly be imitated with the right experimental conditions. No, you think it is ridiculous because you are a hopeless romantic.”

Cullen snorted and luckily for Dorian’s silk pocket square, he had not been drinking his scalding coffee at the time.

Unaware of the danger to his clothing, Dorian continued,“You knew Solona for all of ten minutes before falling in love with her.”

That was not true and Cullen said so. Which only made Dorian’s eyebrows inch up further, which in turn only made Cullen try harder to prove him wrong.

“We had every class together my freshman year. I waited ages before I even asked her out for coffee, and I wasn’t in love with her when I asked, I didn’t even know if she was even really my type.”

“Ah yes, the whole list of so-called essentials that make the Cullen Rutherford 'type'. Does she like the same music? The same shows? Do we have the same career goals?” Dorian made a motion as if to wave away an imaginary insect. “Cullen, everyone has that list and it has absolutely nothing to do with falling in love. Staying in love? Yes, absolutely. But I don’t give a damn about a man’s career ambitions or his favorite movie when he laughs like a lap dog with a nervous disorder.”

Cullen rolled his eyes. “Dorian, your exhaustive list of turn-offs has nothing to do with anything.”

“Scoff all you like.” Dorian had the audacity to still look smug over the whole conversation. “I was there. It was ten minutes at most. On top of the fact that Solona didn't meet a lot of your 'type' criteria. You were just willing to ignore everything that didn’t fit and convince yourself that you didn’t really care if she fell asleep during those miserable historical documentaries you enjoy so much.”

He didn’t remember that. Well, he did remember her falling asleep once but it hadn’t been--it wasn’t that--she had just been tired from studying. And what did that have to do with anything anyway? It wasn’t as if they were still together, she’d gone to medical school in Denerim and was posting weekly updates about her upcoming wedding.

“I think you’re grasping. If I fell in love with her so quickly, why didn’t we go out until after the semester ended?”

Dorian made a show of inspecting his undoubtedly immaculate nailbeds. On anyone else, the gesture would have struck Cullen as vain, but on Dorian the fastidious attention to personal grooming was just another symptom of a personality default they both shared: obsessive, unrelenting dedication to keeping everything just as it should be. They were perfectionists, focused on order and control in a world where little of either were often found. 

“Because, for someone who falls in love easily, you’re terrible at realizing it. But if you're so sure that you're right, why don't you volunteer yourself for my 'ridiculous' experiment? It pays."

Volunteer himself for an experiment that involved trapping himself in a room with a stranger, asking each other an unending list of questions designed to make them fall in love? Cullen was hard pressed to think up something he'd hate more. The very thought of it left a bad taste in his mouth and he gulped down his coffee to get rid of it.

"That's never going to happen," he said. 

* * *

The ancient elevator was too small. Evelyn glanced up at the maximum capacity info displayed above the doors shuddering closed with a rattling metallic groan. 15 people.  _Lies._  Whenever they performed the safety test, they obviously hadn’t used any tall, broad-shouldered men (with adorable scarred lips). She flattened herself against the wall, suddenly unsure how to handle any of this without a table between them. He was so close…

And he was avoiding her gaze just as she was avoiding his--all their easiness from before replaced by an awkward silence that filled the elevator just as well as 13 other bodies.  On impulse, she’d taken the questionnaire with her and her left hand started crumpling up the paper as if to punish it for getting her into this situation. The sound was deafening in the face of their mutual discomfort. Cullen shot her a quick glance and she blushed, mortified, willing her fist to unclench.

Maker, she wanted to vanish through the floor and curl up at the bottom of the elevator shaft. She could live there, forever cut off from social contact--the UofK elevator hermit. Dorian could toss her down food and books. Someone could study her for a thesis project.

She contemplated the feasibility of her hermitage in an elevator shaft, not realizing that he had drawn even closer--something she didn’t realize was possible. Warm eyes met hers and heat licked delicious trails through her stomach.

“Is it your question or mine?” he asked.

Evelyn licked her lips, mouth running dry. “I can’t remember.”

He brushed his fingers over her locked joints. They untensed immediately, as if he’d found some hidden switch in her frozen nerves. Nice trick, maybe he’d teach her. She released the paper and he took it, scanning for a question.

“I’ll just ask you the one we left off with if that’s alright…”

They were so close, much closer than they had been with a table or a wall of awkwardness between them. Her mind was preoccupied with thoughts of ‘He smells like the woods’ and ‘Would he go camping with me? Would we share a tent? A _sleeping bag?_ Would his lips feel as nice as they look?’. So, she did what she always did when her attention was wandering: nodded automatically.

If his chuckle was any indication, she wasn’t fooling him with her ‘I’m not distracted’ routine.

“Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time?”

“I’ve always wanted to make out with someone in an elevator,” she said, overwhelmed by the sheer proximity to his chest. What would it feel like to be crushed against him, grasping onto his broad shoulders to leverage herself up…  
  
Her answer sparked on the heavy air in the elevator, a struck match flaring to life between them. She felt dizzy, flammable, singed raw and aching for the last whisper of air between them to vanish so she could feel him--really feel him. No more cautious touches, brushed hands. But she couldn’t move. Her limbs were heavy, desire churning hot leaden currents beneath her skin. It wasn’t normal to feel that way so quickly was it? She barely knew him, what if he didn’t want to move that fast? Would she scare him off with her out of control libido?

It took all her courage reached out to curl tentative fingers against his chest, half convinced he would recoil away. Instead, he pressed his hand over her palm, flattening it against his shirt. Against her fingertips, his pulse hammered, just as rapid and erratic as her own.

His other hand wound through her hair, thumb rubbing a line up the nape of her neck as he tipped her head back with a gentleness that made her shiver. Desire, half-wild, flickered through his eyes as they traced restless paths across her face. He wanted her, wanted to kiss her. It was impossible to doubt that the way he was looking at her--like she consumed him, like he wanted nothing more than to do the same to her. His gaze hitched on her parted lips. Somehow it felt physical, the weight of his attention making her mouth tingle almost as if he was already kissing her senseless. Almost.  

She was practically panting; breathless and expectant as he let the impending kiss hang between them, an increasing swell of tension winding her tighter and tighter. She fisted her hand in his shirt, nails catching, pulling herself up against him without realizing what she was doing. What was he waiting for?

“Cullen--” she breathed. “Please.”

He surged up against her with a ragged sound like gasp, pinning her back against the elevator, his lips on hers with bruising intensity. Her plea turned into a moan on her tongue.

Evelyn was lost. Pleasure-numb and senseless. Dazed, she clung to him as her legs threatened to give beneath her. His hands came up to steady her and there was nothing to do but go soft against him. He drank in her sighs, ran his tongue over them as if he could taste the sweet ache wringing them from her lips. She'd been kissed before but never like this. This felt like dissolving, like a movie fade-out into strong arms, broad shoulders, and perfect lips.

It was some time before either of them noticed that the elevator doors had never opened. They pulled away from each other, a tumble of heavy limbs amid his breathless apologies for getting carried away. Evelyn could barely manage a shaky smile of reassurance his way, an insatiable ache growing sharp and insistent between her thighs. He returned her smile with one of his own, boyish and crooked--unrepentant despite the apologies he’d offered only moments before.

Some things were so beautiful they hurt to look at and this smile was one of them. It struck her with a physical force--a bright point of joy cracking her open like a geode.

Panicked, she turned away under the pretense of examining the elevator panel.

“Have we...have we even moved?” she asked, noticing that they were still on the same floor as Dorian’s lab. Soon after, Evelyn realized why and pressed the button for the ground floor.

Still breathless, they straightened rucked up hemlines and mussed hair so that it wouldn’t be completely obvious to the rest of world what they’d just been up to.

“What was your answer?” she asked him, “you never actually said.”

“It wasn’t much different than yours, actually,” he admitted, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Not so much the location but...”

Evelyn almost groaned out loud. It wasn’t fair. Bashfulness? It was too much. And as much as she wanted to stay in the elevator and make out with him, eventually someone else would want to use it and that would be...awkward.

The questionnaire was crumpled up on the floor, bearing the print of her shoe. He must’ve dropped it while they were...preoccupied. Evelyn picked it up, flattening it as best she could.

“My turn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU headcanon #1: Krem takes the fashion world by storm through a fashion designer reality show. In one fashion magazine interview, he confessed that he bought his first sewing machine to make a stuffed animal (a nug).
> 
> Cullen and Dorian's conversation reflects a bit of my takeaways from Aziz Ansari's social science research book 'Modern Romance: An Investigation'. I was struck by the observation that so many people make lists for their ideal match when it comes to online dating but ended up not really paying attention to them. I'm the sort of person who falls in love quickly with tiny details about others and there's no list for 'awesome quip at the right time' or 'that one expression you made' so the book's observations about how we often fall in love with details before the big picture really resonated with me. I highly recommend the read!


	3. Second Data Set: Share an embarrassing moment in your life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The meet (not-so)cute! This fic keeps getting bigger and bigger but I think the prepilogue (prologue/epilogue) after this will be the last and I fully intend for it to be smutty (rating will be adjusted accordingly). I had to indulge in a few of my modern Cullen headcanons. No way that guy wouldn't play strategy board games.

They were halfway to the parking lot and almost finished with the second set of questions when Evelyn’s phone launched into the opening theme song of her favorite show--CSI: Hightown. Catching Cullen’s chuckle (oh yeah, he definitely recognized the melody), she shrugged as best as she could while simultaneously fishing her cell phone out of her backpack.

“I have a thing for police procedurals.”

“You don’t say,” he teased, the turn of his lips so distracting that when she finally managed to grab her phone, she promptly dropped it again.

“So, do you think Brennokovic will actually retire?” he asked.  

“No way. They can’t do the show with just Jevlan,” she finally had her phone out and she shut off the alarm with a swipe of her thumb across the screen, heart sinking. “Shit...I completely--I’m so sorry, I can’t go to dinner with you.”

All the teasing humor had drained away from his mouth. “Oh...well, that’s too bad. I--”

Maker, she hated seeing that glorious smile fade into something polite and meaningless. The kind of smile for strangers. Well, they _were_ strangers but...

“Unless...unless you wanted to come with me? We could grab something after,” she ventured before he could finish.

And just like that, his smile was back. Bright and warm--mittened fingers wrapped around a mug of spiced cider on Feastday morning kind of warm. She wanted to stick a ribbon on it and put it under the tree so she could unwrap it all over again. Which was so ridiculous, she couldn’t help her own stupid grin at the thought of it.

“I’d like that,” he said.

And then, paper in his hand, he said, “Set 3. Share an embarrassing moment in your life.”

Just like that, he’d dashed her visions of handsome men festooned in ribbon beneath Feastday trees. Embarrassing moments. She had more than her fair share of those. But for some reason, the only one she could think of was the one she didn’t even remember--strictly speaking, she remembered _pieces of it_ and they were awful. Frowning, she paused...there was something strange about the way he asked her. As if he already knew what the answer might be.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a reason that this particular memory, disjointed and full of holes as it was, pressed so insistently.

Void take Maraas-Lok back to the fiery depths of the volcano in Par Vollen in which it was made.

* * *

 

Cullen was studying. Or trying to at least. What started as a quiet night of strategy board games and craft beer had turned into an impromptu mini-rager after Dagna _brilliantly_ suggested taking a shot of Maraas-Lok whenever they rolled double ones. An hour in, everyone was too drunk to even bother with the right turn order, much less actual strategy. Everyone, that was, except Cullen. His lucky rolls had left him in the unlucky position of being the only sober person in the room.

He gave up the pretense of playing after Lace Harding made an ill-advised frontal attack, refuting Cullen’s attempts to dissuade her with a slurred, ‘Just... _trust_ me. I have a secret weapon.’ Needless to say, her ‘secret weapon’ was not rulebook compliant (it was a handful of raisins that she’d picked out of the bowl of trail mix). The raisins did nothing to stop the decimation of her infantry, which surprised Harding as she insisted they were so disgusting it was practically a new form of chemical warfare. This had intrigued Dagna and she began engineering a raisin trebuchet from Cullen's silverware--enlisting Bram and Jim to help her.

It was fine. If they didn’t want to take the game seriously and get plastered instead, he had plenty of work to do. He didn't bother trying to kick them out, they were too far gone to get home safely.

The front door slammed a few times, rattling the thin apartment walls. Cullen turned the volume down on his headphones just in time to hear a raucous feminine cackle. Of course Dagna had invited Sera--the entomology grad student who'd snuck into Cullen’s room to switch his computer wallpaper to a picture of a man’s buttocks (in full 1920 x 1080 glory) the last time she had been invited over.

Cullen got up to lock his door and then sat back down, turning the volume on his headphones all the way up to drown out Sera’s ‘Come out, come out Cully Wully!’.

When he emerged from his room almost three hours later for a glass of water, the so-called game was in still in full swing. Although...that wasn’t out of the norm for ‘Inquisition’--the setup alone was forty minutes. Someone had brought a homemade cake. Sera, probably, being that it hadn’t been there before. Gaping holes in the sides told Cullen that Dagna appropriating all the silverware had not been a detriment to anyone. Pizza boxes covered the countertops and he glared at them as if they were personally responsible for the mess.

“Cully Wully!” Sera shoved hands crusted over in frosting towards him and he ducked to avoid them. What was she? Three?

In the background, everyone else began talking at once. Something about the couch--a spill? Maker’s breath, Cullen began reaching for paper towels as someone exclaimed that they would “Find a new couch!”. Which didn’t make sense given that he only had one.

“There you go, making that face.” She frowned to imitate him then nodded towards his glass of water. “What’s that for? So you can be even _more_ of a wet blanket?”

He raised an eyebrow--the only response such a clumsy dig merited. “That was bad, even for you.”

Was she even drunk? He could never tell.

Sera shrugged and charged back into the living room to ‘release the petty thieves!’.

Harding deployed an evil laugh, launching raisins onto the board from Dagna’s makeshift trebuchets.

It wasn’t until Cullen had locked his door behind him that he realized someone was in his room. On his bed in particular. He didn’t recognize her; dark, shoulder-length hair, dark eyes and candy-bright lipstick smudged at one corner of her mouth. There was no doubt in his mind that she was the furthest thing from sober--partially because she greeted him as he entered his room with:  
“I think I’m very drunk, so if you could stop spinning around, that would be helpful.”

And before he could say anything, she closed her eyes and burrowed down into his blankets to fall asleep.

He stood there, sputtering his outrage for a good minute before storming out into the living room to demand an explanation for the strange girl in his bed.

Sera was the only one who paid attention to him and all she did was crack a joke about him having ‘all the good problems’.

“If you’re suggesting--”

“Andraste’s flaming lady bits, no.” Sera shot him an evil glare. “Don’t even go there. Don’t even think about going there.”

“ _I_ didn’t go there, you did. Joking about--”

But Sera was already booing, tossing trail mix at him. She was a good shot; pretzels and chocolate chips rained against his face. One bounced off his eyelid. Harding only protested the loss of perfectly good pretzels and Dagna piped in to volunteer the use of her trebuchets. The rest were too preoccupied to even notice Cullen. Bram was sleeping (that wasn’t a surprise, he’d been yawning the entire night), face down on the couch, a butt sketched across his forehead in Sharpie. Jim was pouring out more shots while somehow managing to miss the glasses entirely.

With Bram sprawled across the sofa, Cullen couldn’t relocate the bed thief (dumping her on the floor just felt too...inhospitable). He’d just have to wake her up.

“Just let her sleep it off. You’re working anyway, we could hear the angry typing all the way out here,” Sera ordered. As if this were _her_ apartment and not his. Cursing Bram, board games, and alcohol, Cullen stalked back to his room.

In the span of a few minutes, the drunk girl had pulled up his fitted sheet, rolling it up around her like an oversized burrito. One of his pillows slumped on the floor along with her kicked-off shoes and a toppled stack of textbooks. Cullen felt a pulse at his temple--no doubt where a vein was visibly throbbing. His room may be cluttered but it wasn’t a mess. Once he ousted the interloper, he’d have to straighten everything all over again.

Cullen knelt down, pushing away his other pillow, which she hugged against her cheek. More of her lipstick had rubbed off and Cullen groaned when he saw that it had rubbed off onto his pillowcase. Gingerly, he shook her through the layers of sheets and blankets.

“Hey--wake up.”

Eyelashes fluttered and suddenly a pair of wide eyes looked directly at him, bright and clear. They stared at eachother for a moment, neither of them blinking. Something about her gaze made him feel too open, too easy to read.

“Do you think the existence of the Fade supports nihilist philosophy?” she asked, her face so close to his that he could smell the sweet molasses and spice of the Maraas-Lok undercut by the antiseptic sting of pure alcohol.

Cullen rocked back on his heels. “Uhm--what?”

Her eyes had trouble tracking his movement and her words were more disjointed and bleary than before. “I was...arguing with someone. I think--I think I won.”

“I think you have more interesting dreams than I do,” he muttered.

And because he couldn’t help himself, he added, “There are constant features of the Fade that endure regardless of human subjectivity--at least according to extant accounts--so it doesn’t really support...I mean the question doesn’t make sense anyway.”

Rolling back so that the covers unfurled around her, she clutched his pillow tight, as if the world was spinning and it was the only thing keeping her from flying off the bed. It would be adorable if he wasn’t certain she was smearing more lipstick over his clean sheets. “I was arguing with a cinnamon roll”

“A cinnamon roll?” A _nihilist_ cinnamon roll?

She flipped to face him. “Yes! And he was--he was a _jerk_!”

Cullen laughed, taken by surprise; big, rolling laughs that rumbled up through his chest. By the time they stopped, he found her grinning up at him with soft, dark eyes. She looked pleased with herself. Pleased and thoroughly mussed, her hair and clothes rumpled.

“You have a really nice smile,” she told him in a sleepy whisper that was so utterly endearing, it could have given internet videos of yawning kittens a run for their money. His heartbeat stuttered in his chest.

“Thanks,” he said before she leaned over the bed and threw up onto his carpet.

And that was how he wound up spending the rest of the night holding back a stranger’s hair while she slumped against his bathroom toilet.

“Please,” she moaned, “Just put me out of my misery.”

Cullen only wished someone were there to put _him_ out of his misery. His friends were too drunk themselves (but not completely trashed, thank the Maker for small mercies--his carpet could only take so much abuse) to watch after someone else. Which left him to nurse this complete stranger--making sure she didn’t pass out and concuss herself on the rim of the toilet or fall asleep in the wrong position and aspirate on her own vomit. Instead of complying with her request, he smoothed her hair back to keep it from swinging forward before she could dab a handtowel over her mouth. Once it was safe, he removed his hands from the tangled strands and handed her a cup of water, receiving an unfocused glare for his trouble.

“This better be poison.”

He slumped back against the wall, hitting his head against it with an audible ‘thunk’, “Because your first attempt at poisoning yourself wasn’t enough?”

Cullen watched her messily gulp down the water. There was nothing internet cat video cute about it. Not that it mattered. The whole getting trashed at a stranger’s house routine reeked of pledge-week immaturity. He disliked people like that on principle.

Dorian called his opinions on excessive drinking 'judgy'. 

Dawn was creeping through the frosted glass window, puddling grey light over the girl slouched across his tile floor. She traced an absentminded path through it and set the glass down to lever herself up and look at the square of dishwater sky set into his immaculate white tile.

“The wrong side of sunrise.” She groaned, slumping back down with dejection settling into the lines of her shoulders. He wasn't sure she was still awake until she spoke again, voice steeped in a dream. “There has to be some kind of quantum observer effect with sunrises. Except...it's not the sunrise that changes--it's you. Do you ever get that feeling? On this side you're always _less_ , somehow. You're the person who didn't--who didn't study enough or write enough or  _not drink enough_. And on the other side, you're the person who goes running and eats breakfast before classes. And not an Eggos or Pop-Tarts breakfast, a breakfast with fucking kale or something. You know what I mean?"

Strangely, he did. If he saw a sunrise now, it meant he’d woken up in the middle of the night doused in sweat, clawing at twisted metal that wasn't there, his old injuries from the car accident throbbing like fresh wounds. Or it meant that he’d been awake all night, fighting off the urge to take just another pill for the pain until light crept in through the windows. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last sunrise he’d actually been _happy_ to see. The thought struck him as a sad commentary on his life--when was the last time he’d been on the right side of dawn?

“This isn’t so bad though,” she said, cheek smashed against the bathtub. “It’s not so bad being on the wrong side if you aren’t alone when you do it.”

“I think you’ve struck on the entire reason human relationships exist,” he mumbled, eyes lidding despite his best efforts to keep them open.

“That’s sort of...nice if you think about it,” she said, “finding someone else to face the day with...flaws and all.”

Before his eyes closed, he found himself staring at the translucent glow filtering in through the glass with an unguarded smile tugging at his lips. She was right, it was nice. He was far too tired to analyze the feeling welling up in his chest. It felt right-side-of-sunrise sunny; warm and golden, peaceful and perfect. 

And then he fell asleep.

“There she is,” Sera crowed, startling him awake as she hauled her friend up from the tile, letting her slump against her side. “Time to go home Evil.”

“I’m not evil. Maraas-Lok  is evil,” was the petulant response.

“She won’t be remembering any of this.” Sera cackled. “I can make up something _really_ embarrassing.”

“More embarrassing than stealing a stranger’s bed and throwing up on his floor?” Cullen asked while rubbing his cheek mindlessly against the wall. It was cold. So very nice and cold.

She snorted. “Please, way worse.”

“Really nice smile,” was the contribution from her cargo.

Inexplicably and undoubtedly the result of sleep deprivation; that very smile twitched at the corner of his lips. It didn’t go away when Sera and the strange girl left and it didn’t go away when he shambled back to his room. Too exhausted to do anything else, he simply collapsed into bed. Pressing his face into the cool fibers of his pillowcase, he could smell mussed hair and smudged lipstick. He fell asleep in mere seconds, still smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm crediting Jun Ji Hyun for my love of adorable/obnoxious drunk girl antics.

**Author's Note:**

> -A. Aron, “The Expirimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness”. Pers Soc Psychol Bull April 1997. http://psp.sagepub.com/content/23/4/363.full.pdf+html


End file.
